


Hang On

by Paian



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: 100-1000 Words, 500-999 words, Action/Adventure, Apocalypse, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-10
Updated: 2007-11-10
Packaged: 2017-10-02 15:39:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paian/pseuds/Paian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack's with Sara when there's a devastating attack on Earth. She's a good person to have around in a pinch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hang On

**Author's Note:**

> Post-S10 (now AU) apocaficlet. Prompt 'Jack/anyone, rock.'

They were standing together looking down at Charlie's gravestone when the first blasts tore the fabric of the sky, stitched seams of death into the earth to the southeast. "Crap," Jack said softly, then drew phone and keys from opposite pockets and looked at Sara. "The pickup's safer," he said. Its bulletproof glass and EMP shielding and extra gas tank trumped her SUV's all-wheel drive.

She took the keys from his hand. "I'll drive." When he'd been on the horn for five minutes, clipped conversations with Cheyenne, with Washington, they were half a mile from the interstate and she said, "Towards Peterson, or what?"

Peterson was gone, blasted by Ori cannons along with every other military base and major airport. The SGC had been breached via stargate and self-destruct was initiated and imminent. The roads were filling with vehicles and panic. "That little airfield," he said, and she pulled a hard left, threading the needle between a backup of cars and an oncoming semi that would have blocked the turn in another few seconds. They bulled up an embankment and through a screen of brush and broke into the clear in a fallow field. Across the field, they picked up a back road that Jack had forgotten.

"Shortcut," Sara said.

"No shit," Jack said, laughing. It was harsh, bitter laughter, but there was delight in it too, sheer disbelieving delight at how much more he'd forgotten than the back roads.

The little airfield was deserted, two damaged trainers in the hangar and a single-engine Cessna sitting out on the tarmac. In Idaho they picked up the last stashed 302, which meant the four other pilots with access had been and gone. He'd have liked to see her face when he flew her out into the stars. Comms carried her soft gasp into his helmet.

He trusted his instincts more than the tactical computer and kept them in one piece by the skin of his teeth, running the blockade by feinting an attempt to slip under it and then pulling up hard to take their little fighter straight through the center of an Ori warship doughnut.

"Hang on, baby," he murmured -- half to the ship, half to Sara. She didn't answer; his maneuver had overloaded the inertial dampeners and she was out cold in the seat behind him. His last thought as the g-forces blacked him out too was that if the energy flux fried them, at least she wouldn't feel it.

He came around apologizing to the tactical computer whose evasive maneuvers had gotten them out of weapons range alive, and Sara said, "Hey. Credit where credit's due."

"What?" he said, trying to resolve the blur of status indicators.

"I think your friends out there aim at where they figure somebody who can fly one of these things will fly."

"_You_ had the stick?"

"Well, I woke up, and the thing was shouting at me to take manual control. I don't suppose you guys have any models with steering wheels?"

"Lady, you are a rock," he said -- blinking, marveling, while he leveled the ship back into the plane of the ecliptic and cajoled the angry nav systems into plotting a course to the rendezvous coordinates.

Five hours later, with half of SG-1 dispatched to take out the Orici, the other half organizing resistance on the ground, and Carter and McKay awaiting them at the Alpha Site, they stood together on _Odyssey_'s bridge looking down at the aft display monitor, a last glimpse of the blue marble of Earth before the ship jumped to hyperspace.

"Now, _that's_ a rock," Sara said.

"Yeah," Jack said. _Just like you -- resilient as hell and about to surprise the crap out of the people who underestimate it._

Eyes on the screen, she said, "This is where you throw your arm around me and tell me that we're not looking at another gravestone. This is where you tell me that our personal apocalypse didn't just open out to take the rest of everything with it." As he pulled her in tight to his side, she whispered, "This is where you tell me that we'll come back from this."

"We'll come back from this," he said, squeezing his conviction into the trembling strength of her shoulders, and felt the trembling stop.

"OK," she said, with a firm _that's decided, then_ nod, and put her arm around him too.


End file.
